Today is Homemade Bread Day. I didn’t know that there was such a holiday, but hey – I love bread and I enjoy baking bread so I’m all for it. There is nothing as good as the smell of fresh bread baking … it even trumps the smell of cookies in my world. If you told me years ago, that I would be baking bread on a fairly regular basis, I probably would have laughed at you. At that time, bread baking (if I did it at all) consisted of throwing the ingredients into the bread machine that my husband had gotten for me as a gift and 4 or so hours later out came a loaf of bread, a round tall loaf of bread but bread all the same. Since then I have created my own sourdough starter which is just about as old as my youngest son and babied it along all these years – almost losing it completely when the cleaning people cleaning our house here in Vermont while we were not here and threw away what appeared to be something that had horribly bad. Lucky for me, I still had a jar of starter in New Jersey, which I fed and doubled and we’ve been good ever since.
I have used the starter on a fairly regular basis and given lots of it away to various friends over the years. Now, bread baking is a more hands-on experience and has expanded into different types of bread and different techniques for making it. While I do not at all profess to be even remotely a professional, I’m a good amateur and I enjoy it immensely. The joke around our house has become that I must have performance anxiety when it comes to bread baking since under normal conditions I can make a pretty decent looking and tasting loaf of bread (see above) but when I want to really have the loaf turn out super good (like when my mom comes to visit) it is usually less than perfect.
Despite how it looks, it always tastes pretty darn good. Personally I like bread with pretty much everything but the kitchen sink thrown in there, but my family – well not so much. So my bread baking is generally confined to loaves that the family will eat such as sourdough, sandwich loaves, baguettes and dinner rolls. My latest endeavor has been to find the perfect sandwich loaf of bread, one that will pass the boys’ inspection for lunch. While, they’ll eat just about anything with dinner, taking the bread and making it into a sandwich is a more grueling inspection and I’m still working on that one.
I was recently asked if I would consider doing a baking class (or a cooking class) and I was both flattered and taken aback. Really? Me? The more I think about it, I think it would be fun – but there’s always the issue of the bread just not coming out the way I’d like. What do you think?
To celebrate Homemade Bread Day, go out and make yourself a loaf – here is my recipe for sourdough baguettes which were my first undertaking and is a tried-and-true favorite here at the T’s House.
Sourdough Baguettes
Ingredients:
- 1 cup sourdough starter – recipe follows
- 1 1/4 cup warm water (110 degrees)
- 3/4 cup 1% milk
- 1 T. oil
- 1 T. active dry yeast
- 1 T. sugar
- 1 T. kosher salt
- 6 cups all purpose flour
Process:
- Place 1 cup of starter, milk and warm water into the bowl of stand mixer fitted with hook attachment. Add yeast and sugar.
- Allow to sit for about 10 minutes.
- Add oil, salt and flour.
- Mix on low speed until blended and then mix at medium speed to knead for about 5 minutes. This dough will NOT form into a ball, if it does, you need to add more liquid. It should be wet and slack.
- Place dough into a well oiled bowl or container – cover and allow to rise in a warm place (I put mine next to the woodstove in the winter or into a preheated 160 degree oven (turn it off when it reaches temperature) to proof.
- Let rise until doubled in size. This can take an hour or two, depending upon the temperature. It is more important to move on only when it has doubled, no matter how long or short that is, rather than go by the time alone.
- Remove the dough onto a well floured surface. This dough will be sticky and if the surfaces does not have a lot of flour, you, the counter, the utensils will all be wearing the dough – trust me on this one.
- Divide the dough into three sections.
- Form each section into a ball and then roll out into a log about 9-12 inches long. Repeat for remaining dough.
- Place baguettes onto a baguette pan or separately on a flat baking sheet, sprayed with non-stick spray.
- Take a razor blade or sharp knife and make several slits in the surface of each baguette.
- Cover and let rise again for about 30 minutes.
- During this time, pre-heat your oven to 425 degrees.
- Just before placing baguettes into the oven, brush each one with water.
- Set the timer for 10 minutes. During this ten minutes, you should brush them again with water at least 2 more times.
- Reduce oven temperature to 375 degrees and bake until loaves are golden brown and sound hollow when tapped. (About 25-30 minutes)
- Remove from oven and enjoy!
11 comments
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November 17, 2010 at 9:21 am
outpostcoop
I share the bread love with you!
November 17, 2010 at 9:38 am
tammyheff
Nice to have a friend in food.
November 17, 2010 at 3:28 pm
Julie S.
Sign me up for classes!
November 18, 2010 at 1:38 am
Bob Crosby
Sounded like you planned to include the recipe for the starter? Did you forget? Your improvising on the “steam oven” fascinated me.
November 18, 2010 at 7:04 am
tammyheff
And you are correct, I got sidetracked and forgot. For the original starter, I boiled one potato in a small pot with about two cups of water. Used the potato water and the same amount of flour, mixed the two together, covered with cheesecloth and let sit on the counter for about five days. We had some grapes around during that time in order to catch the “wild yeast” in the air, given off by the grapes (that’s the white coating on grapes) and naturally in the air around us. I had my doubts, but in about five days it was bubbling…..and I’ve had that ever since. Each time I use it, I bring it out from the fridge in its mason jar, let it come to room temperature, take out what I need (1 cup) and feed it by adding one cup of warm water and one cup of flour. I usually let this sit on the counter for either the remainder of the day or overnight and then put it back in the mason jar, seal tightly and refrigerate until I am ready for the next use.
November 21, 2010 at 11:06 am
Julia
Ahh, I want to try this starter! I love making bread too, but haven’t done too much with sourdough. I thought it was funny that my Dad was the first to spot you didn’t include the started directions when I started to wonder the same thing. I’m sure this will work well- potatoes are loaded with sugar and yeast in the air will gather around the sweet grapes- nice bait for yeast! Thanks for sharing, Julia
November 21, 2010 at 4:19 pm
tammyheff
Julia, Your dad and I were just talking about that this afternoon. Let me know how it goes.
November 22, 2010 at 11:27 am
Julia
I started my sourdough starter last night!!! I do have one question about making the bread. Do you have to add the 1 T. active yeast for extra fermentation, or have you tried it with just the wild caught starter? And Tammy, the loaves you photographer are beautiful! I don’t think you will any trouble teaching a class. You know, I remember you gave my Mom and Dad a loaf last x-mas when we were there, and it went in about a day! It was really good!
November 22, 2010 at 11:56 am
tammyheff
Julia, The yeast is extra fermentation, helping it rise quicker. I forgot one of the last times I made it and let the dough sit overnight and it was fine when I baked it the next day.
Thank you for the compliment!
Have a good Thanksgiving!
Tammy
November 30, 2010 at 1:02 pm
Julia
Well, since I last wrote to you I’ve started a starter and baked bread twice! The first time was pretty decent, then I made another last night. I think I may have made a little bit of a mistake. I took the starter out from the fridge to make the bread, then fed the remainder and let it sit out a couple of hours, before putting it back, in the back of the fridge. My dough raised well, but then I baked it on a pizza stone with not enough flour – it stuck pretty bad. But this time the flavor has deminished a lot! Do you think I should start over with a new starter, maybe this one wasn’t very strong? The loaf seems to be more of a puffed, gigantic cake shape- or that more flour would give the stability for a more round loaf…I’d like mine to look more like yours!
And I heard Thanksgiving was a BLAST in a half!
November 30, 2010 at 2:08 pm
tammyheff
Julia:
Don’t throw it away!! It will continue to sour up with age. Another trick is to add either sour salt or citric acid (you can get either from King Arthur) to the dough when you are mixing it. I sometimes add about 1/4 t and reduce the salt accordingly which can add a nice twang. Sometimes what happens is if you use it frequently, it isn’t as sour. Try separating the starter into two batches and alternate which one you bake with, so the other as a chance to “sour up” a bit in between the baking.
We had a great time on Thanksgiving! I hear that you’ll be coming up in a couple of weeks.